felt a terrible sense of strain, a pressure as great as the sky. She felt the iron hands of Denland prying and pushing, just a thin line of red being all that was holding the enemy back.
And so she let Alice chatter on because that way at least someone was happy, if just for a while. Emily’s own thoughts wallowed and struggled, emerging from the dark only when she was asked a question. When Mrs Shevarler raised the subject of money, for example – or at least made hints about just how grand these dresses were going to be – she stirred herself to begin some veiled negotiations. Alice, of course, wanted everything, and Emily knew how little they could afford to spend. And yet it seemed that Alice would get her own way, for once, because abruptly Mrs Shevarler was letting it all go for a fraction of the value, almost throwing her finest wares at them. For a moment Emily assumed it was because she was a crafts-woman, recently lacking the chance to truly exercise her skills. Then she realized that the dressmaker must simply be desperate for money, with useless unsold stock cluttering her storerooms. It was a buyer’s market.
And, despite all that, Mrs Shevarler chattered on, doing her best to pretend that nothing whatsoever was wrong. She was a proud woman and, though she offered more and more value to entice just a few more coins from the Marshwic purse, there was still no suggestion in her voice or her bearing that she was seeking charity.
Then Poldry came by, long-faced and confessing that he had found almost nothing at market for them, and Mrs Shevarler changed entirely. In a voice far sharper and quicker, she was soon instructing Poldry on just where in Chalcaster he should go – where the locals themselves went for food. And, she added, while he was there, might he save her the journey . . . ? And, although she would never normally ask for a down payment from her most esteemed customers – and here she had changed register again, adopting her superior voice for her superior clientele – she wondered if perhaps, if just perhaps . . . ?
And Emily spared her from saying it, and asked Poldry to buy for Mrs Shevarler as well, in lieu of receiving money on account, and the awkward moment passed.
By then, Alice had decided on cut and cloth, and it was Emily’s turn. True to form, Alice found no great pleasure in watching her sister become the centre of attention, and she took the first chance to wander out of the shop and stand by the waiting buggy.
Emily was thus left trying to keep up a conversation with Mrs Shevarler, both of them clutching for the ragged ends of the life they remembered, and trying to work them into whole cloth. How was Mary? How was little Francis? How he must have grown by now! And as for Tubal, had they heard . . . ? But no, they had not heard recently. He had proved to be abysmal at writing letters home from the front. And Rodric? Yes, he must be at the Levant even now along with his new comrades-in-arms. And what of Mr Shevarler? The dressmaker busied herself with the measurements, then went back over questions of colour and pattern and weave. Only then did Emily remember that Mr Shevarler had been killed in the fighting. He had signed up at around the same time as Tubal, and had gone off to the Couchant: the western front, which was where the great bulk of the fighting was taking place. His name had subsequently been sent back to his home town on the casualty lists. But Mrs Shevarler would never openly correct a customer, of course, and nor would she show weakness. And so she and Emily were bound together in that lie, that pretence, going on with their business as though there had never been any such man as Mr Shevarler. The absence of him seemed to grow and grow, until the dead man took up all the space in the shop, becoming impossibly conflated with the luckless deserter that Northway’s men had shot down just a few streets away. Emily began to feel claustrophobic and ill, and knew that she must leave immediately.
And yet if she just bolted from the shop, as she dearly wanted to, then she would expose their joint charade for what it was. And